Put a waiting period on it so its too much work for the spammers and then their first 3 posts must be approved

I second that. I'm sure genuine prospective members will understand the issues. This is the internet after all. A kindly worded explanation and apology could be included in the new-member signup process.

I second that. I'm sure genuine prospective members will understand the issues. This is the internet after all. A kindly worded explanation and apology could be included in the new-member signup process.

S

I think a waiting period would be uncalled for if there was validation for the first few posts.. But I agree that the Spam is annoying.. and it would be great to put as much of a stop to it as we can

Personally, I believe CAPTCHA is the way to go. Its simple, unobtrusive, and allows a real person to post immediately.

This method requires a new user to type in a series of letters and numbers that are displayed. The displayed letters and numbers are randomly generated and are displayed as a photograph. This makes it virtually impossible for the automated register's to read the letters and numbers.

I stumbled across this site/thread while searching spammers of my own forum.
It seems we are in the same boat and having trouble with several of the exact same people.

One thing I have discovered you may be interested in: there are entire "spammer boards" (for lack of a better term). These individuals visit the phpBB and vBulletin help boards, plus search terms like 'message board', 'forum', etc. to find our sites. Once they find your board they post the URL on their site and you get another wave of spammers coming through. The more popular your site becomes, the more visits and problems you can expect.

What they are hoping to accomplish is that their URL gets picked up by a search engine bot when it crawls your site. Your popularity gives more credit to their link and boosts their spam site.

Seems like a waste of time to me, with little chance of actually working but that doesn't stop them from trying. I am currently getting anywhere from 30 - 50 of them each day.

Basically, I just wanted to offer you a heads-up and tell you to keep doing what you're doing - visual and e-mail confirmation. I have already tried the probationary period, it didn't make any difference. They behaved for the first couple of posts to gain access and then cut loose.

If you would like to double-check any new registraints with me that you may not be sure of, I would be happy to share that info and save you all some of the messes I have had to clean up.

I deleted two bot 'members' today. Mike, new users with weird user names - just do a quick google and you'll see the name coming up under a whole bunch of forums. Click on the user name, hit user options, admin, log in, select delete. Done. I wish there was an easy way to put a stop to this crap.

By the way, I'm getting fairly good at deleting users these days . If I happen to delete a 'real person' who actually wants to contribute - my apologies in advance. Just register again and send me a PM telling me you're real.

Maybe we should conduct registration interviews....

Oops - just read your note above. Banning it is. - Of course ithey could just come in under another email address.
Still beats me trying to understand what this achieves.

I deleted two bot 'members' today. Mike, new users with weird user names - just do a quick google and you'll see the name coming up under a whole bunch of forums. Click on the user name, hit user options, admin, log in, select delete. Done. I wish there was an easy way to put a stop to this crap.

By the way, I'm getting fairly good at deleting users these days . If I happen to delete a 'real person' who actually wants to contribute - my apologies in advance. Just register again and send me a PM telling me you're real.

I'll ass-u-me this forum administers somewhat like mine...

Don't have email confirmation turned on.
Automate the email to read: "We'll get a round tuit, email the forum admin's at xyz@pdq.com if you absolutely *have* to post B4 we get round tuit."

Admin once a week (MWF for John, TThSSu for Dust?), activate the new users, delete the others.

BTW, FWIW, banning an IP may not be an ideal solution. Banning my concours.org IP would ban 1k potential members. Banning an email address preferrable, but there's a bajillion of them.